Tuesday, February 17, 2004

More reasons to never, ever, use AOL. End user license agreements hit a new low. So apparently there's an unpleasant worm going around AOL Instant Messenger at the moment. Only it's not a worm - it's a semi-legitimate piece of adware which asks you for permission to "modify the instant messenger software, deliver additional content such as advertisements and promotional messages" and announces that "In addition, the software will interoperate with your current instant messaging client so as to permit the automatic sending of advertising messages originating from your computer to your contact or 'buddy' list regarding content offered by PSD Tools or its suppliers." In other words, it spams itself to everyone on your buddy list. Naturally, since no one ever reads the terms and conditions on those things it's spreading like wildfire. [Simon Willison's Weblog] 12:33:54 PM

Looking for gold in your site stats. Read your logs lately? -- BB Exit-to-Entry Ratio the Quick Traffic Health Indicator. Jason Burby highlights the page exit to page entry ratio as a quick, meaningful calculation to determine where visitors and customers are leaking out of web sites. Not only does it give a quick impression of where problems may be found, but also will often reveal odd patterns indicating other, more complex issues. ClickZ reports. [summary] [MarketingWonk - The single source for no-nonsense Internet marketing news] 11:22:09 AM

Even without an online presence, search advertising still pays. Non-Internet Shops Using Online Local Search. They're not concerned with driving site traffic, stickiness or conversion rates, but many small businesses without Internet presences are beginning to look at search advertising - especially the localized Internet yellow pages - as a must-advertise venue, as more and more customers are searching for services and stores via the Internet. NYT reports. [summary] [MarketingWonk - The single source for no-nonsense Internet marketing news] 11:20:10 AM

Spam by telephone declining. Interesting to see that more than half of U.S. households have signed up for the do-not-call list. My own personal observation is that we are getting fewer of telemarketing calls even on the phone line that is NOT on the do-not-call list. So if a weak law with weak enforcement works on telemarketers, why hasn't email spam also fallen? The point here is that a smart marketing plan will not use either email spam or telemarketing to generate leads and sales. You still have to go out and get your customers the old-fashioned way: one contact at a time. -- BB Do-Not-Call Registry Working Despite Flaccid Enforcement. According to the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) chairman, the telemarketing industry is showing great compliance to the new Do-Not-Call Registry. A Harris Interactive survey showed that more than half of U.S. household signed up to the list and that a quarter of them said they had stopped receiving the annoying calls, and that nine out of ten of them were at least receiving fewer. The compliance comes despite tepid enforcement efforts by the FTC and its sister enforcer, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC issued seven warning citations to alleged violators and has yet to bring stronger action. Of the seven citations, only three garnered replies, none of which provided legal justification for the calls. The FTC has demanded evidence of compliance in a few additional cases. No civil actions have been initiated. [summary] [MarketingWonk - The single source for no-nonsense Internet marketing news] 11:17:46 AM

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